Recall that the scientific method starts out with an observation. Our esteemed principal, Mr. Hartz, observed a few things about a plant in his office lately. His observations are below:
1. The plant (an aloe) is doing much better in his office than it did at home.
2. The plant is putting up new shoots away from the light from the window, contrary to what most plants do.
3. Mr. Hartz dumps his extra coffee into the plant, and this seems to not bother the plant.
So we need to come up with a few hypotheses for these observations, and then come up with some experiments to test them. Let's begin with coffee.
Coffee
Use the best coffee you can buy.
What do you think is in coffee that might affect a plant? Are there multiple substances? How can we test their effects?
Mr. Syracuse did you all a solid and looked up some information on just what caffeine can do to a plant. Here's what he found:
Caffeine can inhibit the formation of a cell plate. This is the bit of cell wall that forms between two plant cells as they divide. As such, the whole cell can fail to divide, and become binucleate, meaning one cell with two nuclei.
Caffeine has been shown to inhibit the growth of microtubules in some plants, which are the small structures that make up the skeleton of a cell.
The substance might cause delays or mistakes in cell reproduction.
Keep the same -- temperature, plant, amount of liquid, amount of light, soil, type of pot, fertilizer
Measure -- growth of plant, mass of plant, color -- take pictures and compare
Light
Why would a plant put up shoots on the opposite side from where the light is? Does the usual habitat of the aloe give us any clues to why this is? How could we test this?
control -- light from top
experimental -- light from side
Mr. Hartz's Experiment
Recall that the scientific method starts out with an observation. Our esteemed principal, Mr. Hartz, observed a few things about a plant in his office lately. His observations are below:
1. The plant (an aloe) is doing much better in his office than it did at home.
2. The plant is putting up new shoots away from the light from the window, contrary to what most plants do.
3. Mr. Hartz dumps his extra coffee into the plant, and this seems to not bother the plant.
So we need to come up with a few hypotheses for these observations, and then come up with some experiments to test them. Let's begin with coffee.
Coffee
Use the best coffee you can buy.What do you think is in coffee that might affect a plant? Are there multiple substances? How can we test their effects?
Mr. Syracuse did you all a solid and looked up some information on just what caffeine can do to a plant. Here's what he found:
Control -- aloe plant, watered normally
Experimental -- aloe plant, add caffeine \
Keep the same -- temperature, plant, amount of liquid, amount of light, soil, type of pot, fertilizer
Measure -- growth of plant, mass of plant, color -- take pictures and compare
Light
Why would a plant put up shoots on the opposite side from where the light is? Does the usual habitat of the aloe give us any clues to why this is? How could we test this?
control -- light from top
experimental -- light from side